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I've been really shocked to see how times have changed in the speaking arena. Perhaps it's related to the.com bust, but conferences have stopped paying as much to speakers as they once have.

Now, it's one thing when you're an open source community that's putting together the conference (i.e. YAPC), but when it's a commercial entity (i.e. SIGS, O'Reilly, etc.) who will be charging a whole lot for the conference pass and make more money off of sponsors

I've been really shocked to see how times have changed in the speaking arena. Perhaps it's related to the.com bust, but conferences have stopped paying as much to speakers as they once have.

That may be true of other conferences but, as far as I know, OSCON has always paid speakers in the same way (although the amounts may have changed).

Jump to today. For EuroOscon, the only way to get any money out of speaking is doing a half-day tutorial (or more). Simple hour-long talks just get the registration waived. And even if I were able to do a half-day tutorial, I'd still be on the hook (depending on their honorarium).

You may be interested in a datapoint. As a European giving one three-hour tutorial at OSCON in San Diego in 2002 the travel grant didn't quite cover my air fare and the honorarium just about covered my hotel bill (or, at least, the accomodation part of it).